Obama's "Not Exactly's"

Several months back I received an email from a family member. The email was entitled "Obama's "Not Exactly's"". This family member was asking me and all other recipients of her email if we knew what, if anything, in the email was true. I did a good deal of research and would like to share these replies since they strike at the core of unfounded accusations against Senator Obama.

In each case the text shown in bold type is the "Obama statement" the writer is about to attack. All text shown below that and in italics is the writer's attack upon that purported statement. Below that, in plain text is my response:


I Never Practiced Islam . . .
NOT EXACTLY, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until your wife made you change, so you could run for office.

Facts: Obama married married his wife Michelle on October 3, 1991. They had known each other for less than two years. The press has made it very clear that he attended a Christian church for the last 20 years. Obama only met his wife in 1989. Whether it was a good or bad Christian church is not relevant when considering the question of whether he practiced the Muslim faith until he was thirty-one years old. He is only forty-six years old now. He clearly was a member of a Christian church when he was twenty six if not before. He was also clearly a member for over a year before he met Michelle.

I Was A Professor Of Law . . .
NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

Fact: This is patently untrue. Here is the statement regarding Barak Obama from the University of Chicago Law School regarding Obama (the statement is shown here in its entirety and is publicly available at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media/index.html):

"Statement Regarding Barack Obama The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined."

I Was A Constitutional Lawyer . . .
NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

Fact: Ditto. See above.

My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian . . .
NOT EXACTLY, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5 AM according to her own interviews. Not to mention, Christianity wouldn't allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.

Fact: Like most of us Obama has two grandmothers. His maternal grandmother, 84-year old Madlyn Dunham was a devout Methodist from Missouri. This is key since it was this grandmother who raised Obama from the time he was ten.

Obama's parents divorced when he was two years old. He has only seen his father a few times since then. His mother rejected organized religion. On a side note, Obama's real paternal grandmother died a number of years ago. The lady who is being portrayed so often in the press, and in the above statement is simply the second wife of his grandfather.

I Was Fluent In Indonesian . . .
NOT EXACTLY, not one teacher says you could speak the language.

Observation: This is inconsistent with other statements in the same email. To say he went to Muslim school and also insist that he did not speak Indonesian seems shaky. There is another statement below indicating that Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer with a perfect accent. I am not sure who went around and talked to all of his teachers, especially the ones in Jakarta, but given that his parents were fluent speakers of English he may have easily been, like many children, bilingual.

I Want Americans To Decide . . .
NOT EXACTLY, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.

Fact: The word "prefer" is out of place here. Obama wins caucuses. I imagine he also likes to win primaries. He did not invent the system he simply made plans to work within it, even after Super Tuesday.

No One on my campaign contacted Canada about NAFTA . . .
NOT EXACTLY, the Canadian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.

Fact: The above referenced memo was written by Joseph DeMora, who works at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. All members of the Canadian Government involved have said that the details in the memo are not factual. The Canadian Embassy in Washington has issued statements refuting the "ham-handed" (their words) writing and irresponsibility of the writer, their own appointed official.

My Economics Bill Will Help America . .
NOT EXACTLY, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill.

Fact: The key word here is "combined". Obama did not vote against his own bill willful. He voted against the entire bill. What else was in the bill? Maybe the bill had been padded with more pork than a pig farm. It's very possible that Senator McCain had added funding for a bridge in the Arizona desert...

I Have Released My State Records . . .
NOT EXACTLY, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within.

Fact: These things are, obviously, a matter of public record for all to see. How else could people know about all of the "Present" votes? The idea that the votes of elected government officials are kept hidden takes the cake for STUPID, even in THIS email...

I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year . . .
NOT EXACTLY, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office.

Fact: If Obama introduced the bills then they are his. If a fellow Senator wrote 26 bills then took none of the credit he or she must be a remarkable person, especially in the highly competitive world of politics.

rj